[jakelazaroff]

"A rental car company" didn't do anything. Humans working at a rental car company did.

Maybe it was a "bureaucratic error" that fraudulently reported the cars as stolen. That bureaucracy didn't spontaneously emerge from dust. Humans built it.

Why should humans not face legal repercussions for the havoc they've wreaked on their victims' lives?

[xwolfi]

Because the havoc they ve wreaked could have been avoided, if only the police itself, a public service, behaved appropriately.

Declaring a car stolen by mistake shouldnt be the end of the world. One day someone with the same name as me committed an offense and I was wrongly given to the police of my country, and it took 5 minutes to clear me and nothing happened.

[shkkmo]

It Hertz didn't intend to ruin people's lives, they would withdraw the police reports when confronted with their mistakes. Instead, the company prohibits that because:

> A Hertz spokesperson told the Philadelphia Inquirer in 2020 that the company has no “mechanism” to withdraw reports and does not do so because “In the rare instances this happens, if you report a crime, and you later say it didn’t happen, then law enforcement tends not to believe you if you retract it or say you were mistaken,” the spokesperson said. “Hertz’s continued good relationship with law enforcement is important.” [0]

It seems like there is plenty of intent there. The intent to continue lieing to police to protect Hertz's reputation at severe cost to Hertz's victims.

[0] https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2022/04/11/hertz-stolen...

[SpelingBeeChamp]

I just searched the Philadelphia Inquirer website for that phrase and was unable to find anything. I also searched Google for the phrase, both with and without quotes, and with/without the words “Philadelphia Inquirer,” and I haven’t found the original source.

Are you able to find the source of that quote? It’s so outrageous, and is so not something that a corporate spokesperson would say, that I wonder if it’s somehow been taken out of context. Or if it even happened.

[shkkmo]

I doubt USA Today made that quote up, since it would open them to significant defamation liability. While I can't find an article with that exact quote, this article is from the right time period and does paraphrase a very similar sentiment as coming from Hertz: https://www.inquirer.com/business/retail/hertz-stolen-car-gr...

> Hertz has no mechanism to withdraw a criminal referral because, the company spokesperson said, it has to maintain a relationship of “integrity and responsibility” with law enforcement

[shkkmo]

Looks like there was an edit between August 4th and August 6th 2020 on the inquirer article:

Aug 4th: https://web.archive.org/web/20200804074215/https://www.inqui...

Aug 6th: https://web.archive.org/web/20200806004611/https://www.inqui...

The original version of the article did have the fuller quote:

> Hertz has no mechanism to withdraw a criminal referral because, the company spokesperson said, it has to maintain a relationship of “integrity and responsibility” with law enforcement.

> “In the rare instances this happens, if you report a crime, and you later say it didn’t happen, then law enforcement tends not to believe you if you retract it or say you were mistaken,” the spokesperson said. “Hertz’s continued good relationship with law enforcement is important.”

[SpelingBeeChamp]

Interesting. I think that someone at Hertz may have made the original statement without authorization. The original article includes the text:

>"A Hertz spokesperson, who asked not to be identified, said that payments or even the eventual recovery of the car did not wipe away what it views as the original theft."

That is bizarre. I am a reporter; I cover news. The spokespeople of major corporations don't request anonymity. Anonymity is reserved for sensitive sources. It's literally the job of a spokesperson to speak on behalf of a company. They don't seek anonymity.

The second version of the article doesn't include the statement that Hertz's spokesperson requested anonymity. Which makes me think that the original source was either not a spokesperson at all, or that they might have been speaking without authorization.

The comment is still weird, but in the context of that article, Hertz doesn't come across that poorly, IMO. If you rent a car, and the rental company asks that it be returned after your rental period is over, going to the point of calling you multiple times, sending you letters, sending you a letter via Certified Mail, and finally trying to repo the car — all before reporting the car as stolen... well... that's kind of on you when the car is subsequently reported as stolen. Even if you kept paying for it. No? People don't have the right to unilaterally extend their rental period. According to Hertz, in 100% of cases, they did all of the above prior to reporting vehicles as stolen.

[Sohcahtoa82]

> I was wrongly given to the police of my country, and it took 5 minutes to clear me and nothing happened.

That's great that worked well for you, but in America, I don't have enough faith in cops for that to work out.

The prevailing attitude is that cops have to be "tough on crime", and if some false positives end up happening and an innocent person goes to jail for a few days until their name gets cleared, that's fine. In the mean time, they'll try to find SOMETHING to charge them with.

Land of the free, indeed.

[jakelazaroff]

Yes, there should be legal consequences for the officers involved as well. Blame is not zero sum.